Reading & Telling Stories to Children: Notes & Sources

Data Sources

King County data on daily reading and telling stories to children birth-5 years are from the Best Starts for Kids Health Survey (BSKHS).BSKHS is a survey about the health and well-being of King County children 5th grade and younger. Respondents who reported "every day" to either of the following questions: 1) "On how many days did you or other family members read to or with this child?" 2)"On how many days did you or other family members tell stories or sing songs to this child?" Data shown here are for collected in late 2016 and early 2017.

To learn more about the survey, please go to www.kingcounty.gov/bskhealthsurvey

Definitions

Confidence Interval (also known as error bar) is therange of values that includes the true value 95% of the time. If the confidence intervals of two groups do not overlap, the difference between groups is considered statistically significant (meaning that chance or random variation is unlikely to explain the difference).

King County regions: The geographic boundaries of the four King County sub-regions (North, Seattle, East, and South) are defined by the aggregation of ZIP codes.

Race/Ethnicity: Federal standards mandate that race and ethnicity (Hispanic origin) are distinct concepts requiring 2 separate questions when collecting data from an individual. "Hispanic origin" is meant to capture the heritage, nationality group, lineage, or country of birth of an individual (or his/her parents) before arriving in the United States. Persons of Hispanic ethnicity can be of any race. Communities Count's terms for racial/ethnic groups are derived from those used by the U.S Census Bureau in 2010.

Communities Count terms: Hispanic, Non-Hispanic, White Non-Hispanic, Black, American Indian/Alaska Native (AIAN), Asian, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (NHPI), White, and Multiple Race (Multiple). Persons of Hispanic ethnicity can be of any race and are included in other racial categories. Racial/ethnic groups are sometimes combined when sample sizes are too small for valid statistical comparisons of more discrete groups.

2010 Census terms: Hispanic or Latino, Not Hispanic or Latino, White alone (Not Hispanic or Latino), Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, White, Some Other Race, and Two or More Races.

Notes

Statistical Significance: Unless otherwise noted, any difference mentioned in the text is statistically significant (unlikely to have occurred by chance).

Trends: We cannot compare 2017 data on reading and telling stories to children to earlier survey data because the way respondents were sampled for participation and the question changed from previous years.

Other Sources

Background on the importance of reading and telling stories to children can be found at:

Maps of King County covering a wide range of topics can be accessed at http://www.kingcounty.gov/operations/GIS/Maps.aspx#PH. Maps most immediately relevant to Communities Count are under the headings of Community data & demographics, Public health, and Environment & natural resources, but other maps should be useful as well (farmers markets, transit routes, walking and biking routes, parks, traffic counts, etc.).

Quotes: Communities Count interviewed 32 King County parents or guardians raising at least one child younger than 6 years of age. We reached out to communities of color, recent immigrants, and residents with limited English proficiency to achieve a broad range of racial, cultural, and socioeconomic diversity. We interviewed both families with very low household income and those who earned up to median income (about $68,000 for a family of four in 2010). Family structures included single-parent households, couples living in consensual unions, married couples, and extended families.